Meet our new Honorary Fellows

Each year at our Graduation Ceremonies, Goldsmiths honours individuals whose achievements reflect values important to the Goldsmiths community.

Many already have a connection with the University although that is not a requirement. In fact, previous honorary graduates represent a diverse group encompassing alumni, former staff, internationally-respected academics and public figures.

Individuals can be nominated by Goldsmiths staff, students, alumni and members of Council via our online nomination form. Of course, if they are not already Goldsmiths alumni, our Honorary Fellows automatically join our alumni community.

Lord David Puttnam

David Puttnam spent thirty years as an independent producer of award-winning films, including The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express and Bugsy Malone. His films have won ten Oscars, 25 BAFTAs and the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Lord Puttnam is a former UNICEF Chairman, Chancellor of the Open University, BAFTA Vice-President and was recently appointed Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Awarded a CBE in 1982 and a knighthood in 1995, he was appointed to the House of Lords as a Labour Peer in 1997.

Green Gartside

Singer-songwriter Green Gartside formed the band Scritti Politti in 1977. Emerging out of the Leeds art school and post-punk scenes, by the mid-1980s they had unapologetically embraced and conquered mainstream pop.

Primarily a musician, he is also a theorist who lived through the tensions between experimentalism and popular culture which played out on the charts, the media and the art world in the 1970s and 1980s. Green’s work continues to influence contemporary artists, while theorists and writers credit him with inspiring them to investigate theory in the first place.

Margaret Howell

Margaret Howell graduated from Goldsmiths in 1969 with a degree in Fine Art and in 1972 established a studio in her Blackheath flat to design and make men’s shirts. She opened her first menswear shop in 1977, launching a women’s collection three years later, based on the same design principles and tailoring of her menswear.

Today Margaret Howell Ltd employs 300 people in 80 locations across the world. She designed the uniforms worn by staff at the V&A and was awarded a CBE in 2007 for services to fashion.

Sheena Gilby

Headteacher Sheena Gilby of Pound Park Nursery School and Early Years Centre in Charlton has just retired after 35 years offering unconditional commitment and support to children, their families, and the Goldsmiths teaching students who undertake placements at her school.

Sheena has shown that she is both willing and able to engage with the whole community in which her pupils live. She has made, and continues to make, a real difference in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, to nursery provision in Uganda through the Redearth project, and beyond.

Adrian Sutton

Composer and Goldsmiths alumnus Adrian Sutton is best known for his scores for the National Theatre’s hits War Horse, Coram Boy and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. All gained Olivier nominations and in the case of the latter, a joint Olivier Award for Sound Design.

Away from theatre and the studio, his output includes orchestral and chamber works. Adrian has also spent many years writing for TV and film, including music and sound design for Chris Morris’ Jam, Blue Jam and the BAFTA-winning short film My Wrongs.